The main thing that needs to be done in the subways is to provide elevator or escalator access to every one of them. I believe this has actually been ordered by a court, but fewer than half the stations have access for people who need it. The second thing is to keep those they have in working order....

Of course there are taxis and car services, but the ride to Lincoln Center costs $20+ each way, which I can only manage occasionally, not two or three round trips a week. As for Uber, I'm having nothing to do with them for various reasons.

That's the thing. If upgrading the A and C lines involves shutting them down, other than late nights and weekends, then I'll be marooned in Brooklyn until it's done; goodbye Lincoln Center and Library for the Performing Arts. I can live with the current system, unsatisfactory as it is, but I can't l...

Quite so, but they shouldn't have had to fight to get their money back; Amazon's algorithm, whatever it is, and their "human" decision-makers, should have taken this into account <ahem> from the beginning.

If a customer is having repeated problems with a vendor, resulting in purchases having to be returned, he/she should "ban" the vendor and buy what they need elsewhere. Amazon is convenient, certainly, but doesn't have an exclusive on what it sells. As for Amazon, if a problem customer has a credit b...

Klemperer guest-conducted the New York Philharmonic in the 1934-5 and 1935-6 seasons in repertoire ranging from Bach to Berg's "Lulu" symphony. More specific than that I can't get. An imposing Bruckner 9th from October 1934 was broadcast and has been recorded; naturally, it's on YouTube, in pretty a...

I'm 2 years older than your husband; that's as close as makes no difference at our age. My father had a Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Leeds, as a field researcher for the Survey of English Dialects which was headquartered there. He later changed his academic field from English literature...

"Elizabethan Serenade" belongs to a distinctively English category, "light music." Wikipedia defines it as "a less 'serious' form of Western classical music, featuring through-composed, usually shorter orchestral pieces and suites designed to appeal to a wider audience than concerti, symphonies and ...

I would never object to music at a wedding (or a funeral), as long as it's classical. Might be the only classical music many ever hear, apart from snippets in TV commercials. The royals or their planners showed some taste; it might well have been Elton John, as at Princess Diana's funeral.

If it's to be lunch, any day of the week is fine with me. If it's dinner, I work at the library until 8pm Mondays and 6pm Fridays. Since I won't be going to any performances at Mostly Mozart this year, that won't be a factor with me.

I'm not saying that deliberately playing wrong notes to test the conductor is brave, but I would say it's pretty brazen. And there are those, such as Pierre Boulez, who have heard wrong notes in the most complex and dissonant modern scores, and corrected them. That's why the New York Philharmonic pl...

I don't agree that the role of music is to provide evolutionary advantage. That may not be the "role" of music - what would you say is the role or roles of music? - but it's arguably an aspect of music. (Pinker denies this, as I said.) I've suggested what such an argument might be but am not inform...

The Philharmonic's archivist, Barbara Haws, is retiring. She is largely responsible for the archives being as full as they are and so much being digitized and put online, including the complete performance annals with facsimiles of the actual programs. The Times invited her to choose 10 favorite ite...

I reviewed Raff's 5th symphony ("Lenore") for Fanfare in 1983, the Bamert recording, and didn't find much to like in it. But it appears to have been Raff's most popular symphony, with performances by Toscanini and the NY Phil in 1931 and by Bernard Herrmann on CBS Radio. There's one piece by Raff I ...

In its news stories the NY Times normally refers to people by their titles, or if none then as Mr. or Ms., even mass murderers. But the article you link to isn't a news story, it's an interview piece which appeared in the Style section - odd. I actually read the NY Times piece, or parts of it. Peter...

No surprise there. But the Met will have a hard time proving that "the company has and will continue to incur significant reputational and economic harm as a result of the publicity associated with Levine’s misconduct.” To the contrary, it was largely Levine's leadership from the depths of the post-...

Some orchestras, maybe many, test their conductors' competence by making deliberate mistakes during rehearsals to see if the conductor can detect and correct them. If not, then the orchestra doesn't think much of him. To me this is unprofessional, orchestral players shouldn't make mistakes deliberat...

"Happiness researchers." The topic of happiness, however measured, begs so many questions that it can hardly be researched, not until there's general agreement on what happiness is. Just asking hundreds of thousands of people where they live and how satisfied they are with their lives doesn't cut it...

If I were still buying records I'd certainly buy this set. There are other sources of Beecham performances than the BBC; his New York Philharmonic appearances are in the orchestra's archives, and I found Mozart's "Impresario" overture in an ABC (American, not Australian) broadcast with the short-liv...

Hey, Lance, I told you about Atlantic Grill in the Birgit Nilsson thread: "the successor in O'Neals' space, a branch of the Atlantic Grill, which is mainly though not exclusively about fish and seafood and costs rather more." When I ate there the food was good but the menu rather limited - they don'...

There's also an archive of CompuServe Music Forum posts and threads at the Web site called Forumania: https://www.forumania.com/forum/lifestyle/classical-music I hoped it would catch the attention of some former Music Forum members and get them back in touch, but unfortunately this isn't happening a...

On the other hand, there are people who are mainly or only interested in Bach, such as mathematicians (I've been told). And of course it depends on the Bach; his Brandenburg Concertos have very broad appeal, a movement from one of them was the theme music for a TV program, and the air from the 3rd o...

Sorry, Belle, it's Lance who's been reading the book. Lance, what do you think about my comments a couple of posts ago? I wouldn't expect a psychiatrist to discuss music in the terms Belle mentions, but general questions such as why some music appeals to people generally and other music doesn't migh...

I haven't bought any recordings for years and don't expect to. I have more than enough already, indeed my project now is to dispose of what I've got. There are plenty of new CM experiences online from YouTube and services like Spotify, not to mention live performances where I live, so there's no need.

By "audiences" I don't believe Lichter means connoisseurs like most of us here at CMG (pats self on back) but listeners for whom Bartok's quartet no. 3 hurts their ears. Belle, you're reading her book, am I right about this? Also, while maestrob's distinction between "modern" and "contemporary" musi...

It may be on DG now, but when published in the early 50s the label was Decca - cf. the World's Encyclopaedia of Recorded Music 3rd supplement. In those days Friedrich Gulda was an exclusive Decca artist.

Haven't heard these, but I would expect Brendel to shine in the Brahms/Handel, as he did in his later performances of the Diabelli Variations, characterizing each variation sharply and distinctively. Too bad about the piano, but if this is the only surviving recording by him of this piece, it's sure...

She writes, "Audiences are less comfortable with contemporary music, compared to baroque or romantic, because modern music is not often pleasing to the ear initially and the tonalities and music language are difficult." This is needlessly vague. The reasons are that most modern and contemporary musi...

O'Neals' closed in 2010. The owner Michael O'Neal said it was largely because the owners of the building, which was converted into a high-rise condo in the '90s, were raising the rent too high when the lease ran out, and partly because of declining business after New York City Opera left Lincoln Cen...

When I first began getting records of my own, the top choices for the Beethoven violin concerto (and later the Brahms) were Grumiaux with van Beinum and Milstein with Steinberg. Since I'd seen van Beinum and the Concertgebouw Orchestra in concert, that's the one I chose for both concertos, and I'm s...

That's what I thought about the Australian outback's scenery, and as for the ticket prices, you'd think it was the Orient Express. But here in the US we no longer have any passenger trains that cross the country, a change in Chicago is always necessary, so I'm impressed by other big countries that d...

In the last movement of the symphony Mengelberg improves on Tchaikovsky (he thought). At the general pause before the coda, he rewrites the harmony before the pause, then cuts the vamp-till-ready in march rhythm, then cuts the repeat of the main theme. Listen at 40:20 and the following: NfHnMLD6pGU ...

"La Nilsson" is also the title of her autobiography as translated into English, an entertaining and informative read. One thing I learned from it is that the Decca/Solti "Tristan" was originally to have featured Jon Vickers singing the title role for the first time, but he backed out, and no qualifi...

Thanks so much; I'll show my husband. We love trains and alpine countries. Have you ridden the Ghan? Not exactly alpine, and it doesn't get you nearer to a New York City meetup, but it's closer to home. The Ghan episode of Mighty Trains isn't available complete on YouTube for free, but this program...

My husband wants to do one of those cruises from Toronto to Alaska and maybe we could cross Canada by rail. Apropos, here's a documentary from the American TV series "Mighty Trains" about crossing Canada from Vancouver to Toronto on VIA Rail's The Canadian. Four nights. PsqGjprxoIk https://www.yout...

Over-heard in the audience : “ Is it warm in here ? Not for violinists.” Some here, maybe all, know the origin of that joke. The occasion was Jascha Heifetz's sensational American debut at Carnegie Hall in 1917, age 16. Mischa Elman and Leopold Godowski were sitting together in the audience and Elm...

According to Wikipedia, Odnoposoff was one of the concertmasters of the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic before the War. That explains his participation in Felix Weingartner's recording of Beethoven's triple concerto with the VPO during that period. The other soloists are no more famou...

Lunch or supper, count me in! I'm still sorry to have missed the meet-up with Barney. As long as it's in NYC. Some dates and times aren't good for me but I won't go into that until we start making actual plans.

I shelved my records in order by the name of the publisher and the issue number on the spine, regardless of the source, so the vagaries you describe wouldn't have affected me. The catalog of my collection, with sections organized by composer/work and performing artists, is how I found the record I w...

Johannes Brahms (1833-97): |Tr. 1-30. Variations in A Minor on a theme of Paganini, Op. 35 (21'46) |Tr. 31-57. Variations & Fufue in B Flat Major on a theme by Handel, Op. 24 (25'34). I'm surprised you think that of the Handel Variations, musically inventive and I'd say not explicitly virtuosic as ...

With Mitropoulos it was the other way around - the players of the New York Philharmonic bullied him mercilessly, and he never retaliated. I never heard that "they loved him as their conductor," their behavior sometimes rose to contempt. But when conducting in Europe, especially Vienna, the musicians...

Brooks is a sociologist and the president of the American Enterprise Institute. He does have a little bit of experience as an orchestral player, three years in Barcelona 25 years ago. But compared with the behavior of Toscanini, Reiner, and others not so long ago, his one example involving a guest c...

In his younger years Paul Badura-Skoda made some good Schubert recordings. I have his B flat op posth sonata on the Bärenreiter label and like it; he and Jörg Demus recorded Schubert and Mozart duos for Westminster, which I also like. Both were in their 20s and former pupils of Edwin Fischer (as was...

Thanks! I saw Windgassen as Otello in Stuttgart and wasn't convinced, very musical but not very exciting. Jurinac as Desdemona (Vienna, Cluytens) is maybe the most moving I've seen. To have them both in the one telecast is great. Argeo Quadri was the State Opera's Italian conductor of all trades in ...